Prior art voice mail systems use series of pre-recorded messages to allow the voice mail system to interact with both incoming callers and subscribers to the voice mail system (those who have mailboxes on the system). Applications written for the voice mail system and the inputs made by incoming callers and/or subscribers determined which pre-recorded messages are played and the order in which they are played. These inputs are usually in the form of DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) tones generated when the caller or subscriber presses a button on the telephone keypad. Some of the pre-recorded messages include context related information. A common example of such a message is, “You have <number> new <message/messages>.” The “<number>” portion of the message is replaced by a pre-recorded message fragment of the appropriate number for the mailbox being accessed. Further, the system chooses whether to use a pre-recorded fragment for “message” or for “messages” depending on whether the numeric value of <number> is 1 or another number. Prior art voice mail systems typically use one set of prerecorded messages for all subscribers and callers. This one set of prerecorded messages also uses a single voice for all of the messages in the set. The same person (voice talent) records each of the messages.
A problem with the prior art voice mail systems is that different people find different speech patterns appealing. Different people tend to like and thus better understand different voice patterns. Aspects of voice patterns include fast or slow speaking, sing-songy speaking or monotonatic, pitch, dialect and the gender of the speaker. Voice patterns also can reflect different personalities of the speaker.